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Volume 170, Issue 7

Diversity and structure of the deep-sea sponge microbiome in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean Open Access

Abstract

Sponges (phylum Porifera) harbour specific microbial communities that drive the ecology and evolution of the host. Understanding the structure and dynamics of these communities is emerging as a primary focus in marine microbial ecology research. Much of the work to date has focused on sponges from warm and shallow coastal waters, while sponges from the deep ocean remain less well studied. Here, we present a metataxonomic analysis of the microbial consortia associated with 23 individual deep-sea sponges. We identify a high abundance of archaea relative to bacteria across these communities, with certain sponge microbiomes comprising more than 90 % archaea. Specifically, the archaeal family Nitrosopumilaceae is prolific, comprising over 99 % of all archaeal reads. Our analysis revealed that sponge microbial communities reflect the host sponge phylogeny, indicating a key role for host taxonomy in defining microbiome composition. Our work confirms the contribution of both evolutionary and environmental processes to the composition of microbial communities in deep-sea sponges.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): deep sea , metataxonomics , 16S rRNA gene analysis , microbiome , Porifera and sponge
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Novo Nordisk Fonden (Award NNF22OC0079021)
    • Principle Award Recipient: SamE Williams
  • Medical Research Foundation (Award MR/N0137941/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulCurnow
  • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Award BB/T001968/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulR. Race
© 2024 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2024-07-29
2025-06-13
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Diversity and structure of the deep-sea sponge microbiome in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean
Microbiology 170, 001478 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001478
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001478
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001478
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